CES Letter

As all students of Christianity know, poor St. Sebastian was viciously martyred after simply voicing some innocent doubts about Diocletian and the Roman government. Those who have studied the history of Christianity will be familiar with the term hagiography. The term derives from Greek and means, essentially, writings about saints. Hagiographical accounts were valuable tools … Read more

A popular, if not highly imaginative, depiction of Samuel the Lamanite preaching to the Nephites. In his “Letter to a CES Director,” Jeremy Runnells claims that the story of Samuel the righteous Lamanite preaching repentance to the apostate Nephites in Helaman 13–16 demonstrates Joseph Smith was guilty of plagiarizing Ethan Smith’s book View of the Hebrews. (On … Read more

In our modern, busy world there’s always a need for a guide to this or that. Hence we see guides for coin collecting, guides for fitness, guides for video games, guides for travel, and guides for sports. Since, by some accounts, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is teetering on the brink of … Read more

Michael Conway, writing for The Atlantic, has some excellent observations on “[s]ingle-perspective narratives” in historiography, which he claims “do students a gross disservice.” Conway, using the recent controversy over the movie Selma‘s portrayal of Lyndon B. Johnson and other films on historical figures as his catalyst, explains the perils of boiling down history into reductionistic … Read more

In his “Debunking FairMormon’s Debunking,” Jeremy Runnells provides a donut chart that shows FairMormon supposedly agreeing with 79% of his “Letter to a CES Director.” According to Runnells, “The above donut chart shows percentages of the entire Letter to a CES Director that FairMormon is in agreement, disagreement, and neutral on. If one assumes that … Read more

Jeremy Runnells has a bad habit of misquoting people. As I showed on my blog a little while ago, he misquoted the printed endorsements of Brian Hales’ three-volume Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, for example. Most recently, he has misquoted both a dead and a living Latter-day Saint apologist, namely, B. H. Roberts and Daniel C. Peterson. … Read more

When Jeremy Runnells accused Brian C. Hales of being an “amateur,” he assured me that “[t]he real scholars in the field of polygamy have issues with many of Hales’ conclusions and interpretations.” I asked Runnels who exactly these “real scholars” were, and also specifically asked where they had published their rebuttals of Brian’s work. Remember, before … Read more